Re: Need help with constraints in Oracle 7 (desperate)

In article <771609481_at_f573.n115.z1> Michael Stowe <Michael.Stowe_at_f573.n115.z1.fidonet.org> writes:
>First, it must be said that updating a primary key column is not a normal thing
>to do, and usually indicates that either something is wrong with your model or
>your front end.
>
>Most schools of relational theory will tell you that if it can be updated, then
>it is NOT a primary key.

Is that necessarily true? If so, then that would explain why the update cascade uption is missing. We built an application that maintains a set of "books" for our customers. Each "book" had several "sections", each "section" had several "lines" in a predetermined order, and each "line" had several prices.

Everything fit right into the relational model, except the "lines" of text. We got them in the right order via a hidden from the user sequece field, but moving a line (a common operation) sent Oracle into fits because of the dependent prices wouldn't allow the line sequence number (part of the primary key) to be updated. An update cascade foreign key option would have been nice here.

Did we set this up wrong? How would you have done it? To get the thing running we set it up as a linked list, and used the hierarchical query mechanism. It ain't pretty.

I am interested in your input,
Marty Received on Sun Jun 19 1994 - 20:48:54 CEST